MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — A legendary sportswriter in West Virginia is celebrating his 90th birthday.
“I’ve been so blessed by friends, by family and friends,” said Mickey Furfari. “And I feel I am happiest when I’m writing.”
Furfari, a Morgantown native, is well known throughout West Virginia for his more than 65 years of writing about sports.
His career started in college at West Virginia University when he shared sports editor duties at The Daily Athenaeum with Jack Fleming from 1946-1947 and worked for the Associated Press in Huntington.
Furfari served in the U.S. Army in World War II from 1943-1946 and was the sports editor, during part of that time, for the Pacific Stars and Stripes.
Following his graduation from WVU’s School of Journalism in 1948, he worked for the Charleston Gazette before returning to Morgantown in 1949 to fill a number of roles with Morgantown newspapers, mainly covering the Mountaineers, up until 1989.
Since then, he has worked as a special syndicated writer and columnist for newspapers throughout West Virginia. He produces four columns each week for five newspapers, even though he is hard of hearing and legally blind.
He said he still loves writing. “I have three (columns) for this week already,” he said.
MetroNews affiliate WAJR-AM in Morgantown helped mark Furfari’s 90th birthday with a special edition of “Morgantown AM” on Monday.
He was also a guest on Monday’s MetroNews “Talkline.”
On the show, Furfari said he wants to keep writing about Mountaineers sports. “I have no plans to retire as long as the good Lord continues to give me good health,” he said.
He said what motivated him at the beginning of his career is still the same. “I love people and the more I wrote, the more I just loved it,” said Furfari.